THE DELI DIARIES

A woman ponders life and sandwich meats in this debut novel.

Della is 31, back in her hometown of Omaha, Nebraska, after a bad breakup, living in her parents’ basement. Despite her art degree, she’s picked up a job at the local supermarket and spends her days slicing meat and cheese for the customers who make their ways to the deli counter while also bantering with the wide array of characters who find themselves working there. The novel is a stream-of-consciousness tour through a shift that is at once one day and many days, with Della pontificating on life, reality shows, dating, the patriarchy, and everything in between, with deli-meat puns sprinkled throughout. The author has an MFA in printmaking, and every few pages the typography does something inventive, whether it be words twisted in the mockery of a smile, repeated pages of spiraling questions, or supermarket signs that draw the reader deeper into the mediocrity of Della’s daily life. The narrative winds around and around, frequently becoming surreal and almost nonsensical as it drifts, sometimes sentence to sentence, according to Della's whims. Though it endeavors to poke fun at everyone, including housewives, millennials, gamers, Nebraskans, and middle-aged men, there is an undercurrent of derision. The novel's whimsical nature precludes genuine feeling and so Della, the center of the narrative, spends the whole of the book laughing at, not with, the people around her, including herself. Though there is an illusion of warmth, the novel lacks the emotion or resonance that would have anchored its frivolity.

Creative but held together with only superficial flavor, like deli meat sliced too thin.